A typical gas range, for home or commercial use, includes a plurality of surface gas burners in addition to an oven and possibly a broiler compartment. Additionally, gas cook tops, having surface burners only, have become popular in recent years, boosting the use of gas for cooking. However, in order to compete with the other methods of cooking, designers of gas range surface burners have come under increasing pressure to reduce the cost and size of these devices while at the same time increasing the reliability and cooking efficiency thereof. However, certain design constraints in a typical surface gas burner construction have heretofore limited the advances capable in this area.
A typical surface gas burner is constructed from two components. The first component is the gas burner base which forms the gas inlet, plenum, and typically the plurality of gas ports defined between salients on the outer periphery of the base. The gaseous fuel exits these ports, forming the cooking flames once ignited. The second component which is used to construct a typical surface gas burner is the gas burner cap. This gas burner cap typically has a flat lower surface and sits on the burner base forming the upper walls for the plurality of gas burner ports in the burner base. This typical gas burner cap, being a solid piece, also forms the upper wall of the gas plenum into which the gaseous fuel flows prior to exiting the gas ports.
This typical construction, while having been used for years, carries with it a relatively significant manufacturing cost due to the necessity of machining the gas ports within the base of the surface burner. This machining process creates a plurality of salients which form the two side and bottom walls of the gas port (the lower surface of the burner cap forming the top wall of the gas port). In order to avoid breakage of these salients, a minimum thickness is required, thus limiting the number and size of the gas ports which may be machined into the surface gas burner of a given circumference.
This limitation has a practical impact on the surface gas burner particularly as a desire for increased BTU output continues to rise. Since the required wall thickness limits the total burner port area and number of burner ports which may be included in a surface gas burner of a given circumference, the increased gas flow necessary to increase the BTU output results in an increased length in the primary gas flames produced by the burner. As these primary gas flames extend beyond a given length, safety concerns are raised, and the efficiency and usefulness of the burner decreases, particularly when using cookware having a small circumference bottom surface. In order to allow for an increased BTU output, designers heretofore have been forced to increase the circumference of the surface gas burner to allow for adequate gas port area while avoiding the long primary gas flames produced by smaller circumference burners. However, once again a large circumference surface gas burner has decreased usefulness for smaller circumference cookware.